Barkskins (67 page)

“I admire your spirit, but that may not be enough, Miss Heinrich. I will keep your name in my book and let you know if we have a suitable opening in future.”

The second applicant was a middle-aged rusty-haired widow, Annag Duncan, thin, with long spider-leg fingers. She had a low easy voice.

“I worked in the office of a hat manufacturer in Glasgow before I met my husband, Alasdair Duncan. Then I stayed to home. We married and he wanted to come to the New World and make a living as a purveyor of fine woods. He knew what was desirable. We went to New York. But his cough—he had a little cough for years, nothing much—this cough became very constant and brought blood. A doctor said he had consumption and should go to a dry mountain climate. But before the mountains, said the man he worked for, he must go to Detroit and examine some beautiful clear pinewood, so we came and he died two weeks after we come ashore. He never got to the mountains.”

She was homely, had no money, indeed she wore threadbare garments. But her office experience with the hat manufacturer gave her value and Lavinia hired her. She sent again for the stump farmer's daughter to help Annag. “I will put your avowal of wanting to learn to the test. You are hired. You will be paid five dollars a month with a chance of more if you do well. We will be shifting to Chicago in coming months. Report to Mrs. Duncan at seven tomorrow morning—she will assign your tasks. I expect hard and accurate work from you.”

Now, she thought, I must deal with Cyrus, for she longed to get him out of the company. His fussy, overbearing ways, his dulled hearing, were unwanted. She had every confidence in her own abilities aided and abetted by Flense and Pye. And still there was no reply to that letter.

The answer when it came was so contrary to her expectations she could hardly grasp what she was reading. She plowed through it again and again, sure she had made a mistake. But right enough, it was a refusal: “. . . your generous but unusual offer . . . prefer to keep my own name . . . choose my own helpmeet . . . earn my own way in the world.” Mr. Andre Roque had the effrontery to wish her good fortune.

She fell apart, she raved and shrieked, hurled clothes, furniture, smashed books through the window, screamed obscene words she didn't know she knew and finally crashed sobbing onto the torn-apart bed.

Downstairs Mrs. Trame and the new maid, Alberta Snow, heard the uproar.

“Whatever ails her!” said Alberta.

“I expect she is grieving for her father,” said Mrs. Trame.

“That is no grieving. That is fury, that is a fiery rage. That is a mad-dog rage.”

“Grieving occurs in different ways,” said Mrs. Trame.

•  •  •

The next morning, dressed in black, Lavinia came down to breakfast table very quietly, drank three cups of coffee and ate toast and an apple.

“Mrs. Trame, I shall be going to the Duke offices today. I will be home at noon and would like something simple for lunch—whatever you have on hand. And please ask Mr. Kneebone to repair the lights in my bedroom window. I had a bit of difficulty yesterday but am quite all right today.” That moment, she told herself, had been her last emotional expression; from now on she would reject sympathy and condolences as evidence of weakness. She would feel nothing for anyone.

•  •  •

Cyrus came into the office smoking one of James's cigars (he had taken the box from James's desk after the funeral) and stood gazing at Mrs. Duncan, who sat at her desk, pin-neat in a black woolen dress with a modest collar.

“Who might you be?” His tone was offensive.

“Mrs. Annag Duncan. Miss Duke took me on as office manager. And you are—?”

“Hah? Hah?” At last he understood. “Office manager! I was not consulted. Where is she?”

Mrs. Duncan nodded at Lavinia's door. “May I announce you, sir?”

“What! Hah! Foolishness!”

Cyrus began at once. “Who gave you leave to hire that woman?”

She shouted in his half-deaf ear, “Every member of the Board save you and me has passed on. I need permission from no one. I am the head of Duke and Sons, the heir to James Duke's estate and business interests, and I shall do as I feel necessary.”

“Well that is blunt enough, ma'am.”

“Now, about your own place in this company. It is better if you leave.” Cyrus would bluster, make a scene—but he surprised her.

“Lavinia, I, too, think it is a time for a change. I have wanted my own lumber brokerage for some years. I have contacts with several logging companies, not just Duke and Sons. And every day sees a dozen new logging concerns at work in the woods. Of course I would hope Duke and Sons would be my prize client.” Annag Duncan in the outer room heard every word.

Lavinia smiled. “Cyrus, I congratulate you. I intend to shift this company to Chicago. And rename it Duke Logging and Lumber as there are no extant sons.” Cyrus started to say something but she put her finger to her lips and pointed at the door to the outer office. She took up her pen and wrote: “Company outgrown Detroit. Center shifting. Chicago ideal. Double population in 2 yrs, forest, lakes, rivers easy transport logs. Gal. & Chi. Railroad and more building. Ill & Mich Canal connect Miss.” She waited until he had read this and then shrieked into his hairy ear, “The flow of business is shifting from north-south to east-west with the railroads going where no rivers flow. Chicago the center. No business can ignore this.”

“Hah!” said Cyrus, impressed by this rounding out of Chicago's situation. “Gad, it's true.” Men all over the country, all over the world had caught the arousing scent of Chicago, the city of the century, already a central hub, everyone coming to it with a common hunger, coming to take and take and take again. Chicago was raw greed and action, and would perhaps become the most important business city in the world. He decided to shift his own enterprise to Chicago immediately.

Lavinia wrote again: “Board meeting, you formally step away. Please remain on Board of Duke Logging. Likely we incorporate.”

He read this, gave her a sharp, surprised look and said, “In many states the legislatures hamper the activities of corporations.”

“Duke Logging is in a favorable situation as far as the Michigan legislature is concerned.” Cyrus said nothing and she took his silence for understanding. “I want you to start your new venture without acrimony. Are Breitsprechers one of your clients?”

“That is for me to know, not to say. Ha ha.” He might as well have written it on the wall.

•  •  •

In another year she was settled in Chicago in a lakefront house topped by a glassed-in copper-roofed cupola, but Mrs. Trame was gone, a victim of dropsy that made her legs swell to the size, shape and color of Boston harbor seals. She had suddenly fallen dead on the floor while kneading bread dough. The new cook, Mrs. Agnes Balclop, was proficient enough. And old Kneebone kept things in repair, tended the horses and yard, got drunk and roared on Saturday night. Lavinia had a companion, Goosey Breeley, a distant New Brunswick cousin of Posey, who had found her way to Chicago. She looked somewhat like Posey and her voice and accent were very like. She became official sympathizer, consulting physician, favoring critic and errand runner. She managed the household, everyone in fear of her wicked New Brunswicker tongue. And she explained freely and often that nothing in Chicago could compare with the virtues of New Brunswick.

•  •  •

Lavinia, Lawyer Flense and Accountant Pye met in the new boardroom, a perfect square of white plaster walls with seven windows looking onto Lake Michigan, for a discussion of suitable candidates for the company's positions. Annag Duncan put a steaming coffeepot and a plate of cookies and cakes on the long table under the windows. Although James had hired four new landlookers and their assistants before his fated trip east, they needed more; the Breitsprechers were buying vast tracts of land on credit—they were pulling ahead. Someone had to take on Lennart's old job.

“In my current situation I cannot serve as company head and still manage the landlookers, jobbers and mills.” Lavinia tapped on a stack of papers. Flense bit into a crisp lemon cookie. Mr. Pye made a note. “You want a production manager,” he said, and she nodded. “Let me suggest Noah Ludlum—a Maine man familiar with everything from beans to boomage. He is subject to occasional fits of epilepsy so cannot work in the woods as a logging contractor, but he has great knowledge of all operations and a talent for working well with men and choosing good ones to carry out what he cannot.”

“Can I meet with him next week? Is he in the region?”

“He is currently working for the Breitsprechers, but I know he is not happy with their odd ways. Shall I contact him?”

“Yes, do so. And transport—do we not need someone responsible to oversee all our transport means whether rafts, barges, wagonloads or railcars? And ships? Should we build our own lumber barges?”

“Miss Duke,” said Flense, “wherever you can cut out the middleman you will profit. Reduce the number of hands through which your product must pass before it brings you income. Your company would do well to build its own ships and barges in its own shipyards.” Lavinia made a note but an idea was stirring. Flense got up and went to the cookie plate. He took two with lemon icing.

Pye spoke again. “And even small actions will make a difference in your bottom line. A question: do you have stores at the jobbers' camps? Places where the axmen can purchase clothing, tobacco and other necessaries?”

“No. Is that not the business of the jobber?”

Flense leapt in. “Ah, precisely my point. You must directly employ camp overseers and run your own crews. Pass over the jobbers.”

Pye again, “Yes, pass over the jobbers, operate Duke Logging crews under strong-minded salaried overseers. Hire the best camp cooks at the lowest wage. At each camp introduce stores stocked with trousers, boots and socks, knives and axes, galluses and candy, tobacco, maybe even papers and candles, combs and such. Get these things at the lowest price. I can take on a buyer's duty if you wish. Then charge a little higher than the merchants in town and you will get back a considerable part of what you lay out in wages.”

She nodded. She interpreted these suggestions to mean “pay as little as you can in wages and sell your goods to the workers for as much as they can stand.” Shanty men in remote locations would think it a benefit to have a camp store. Ideas were boiling in her mind. She said, “I have read of a Pennsylvania logging company with a short-line railroad from the cut to the mill, a small steam engine hauling the cars. We could look into doing the same. It would be an escape from the tyranny of rivers, for we now cut only trees close to waterways. Some of the most desirable timber is distant from water and deemed too much trouble to cut. Though of course a railroad would be frightfully expensive.”

“You have to spend money to make money. Do not fear innovation—that is where money grows.” Flense had demolished the lemon cookies and was starting on the molasses drops.

“I read also that same company milled on site and then sent the seasoned lumber to market by rail. We need to build our own railroads.” She hesitated a little then said, “Mentioning Maine made me think. I believe we still need someone reliable in Maine to handle our interests. My father planned to dispose of our forestland there since the white pine is almost completely cut, but he died before it could be sold and now I wonder if there might be a market for other kinds of wood than pine? There is spruce, hemlock, but also much hardwood—beech, maple, walnut, oak. These might have values we do not yet recognize. I think we should hold on to it and look into possible markets for other woods. The Michigan land also has many more kinds of trees than pine.”

“Miss Duke,” said Lawyer Flense. “You have business acumen beyond that of most men.”

“I learned from my father. And Uncle Lennart.”

“But one more suggestion.” He whisked crumbs from his vest. He squinted at her with great seriousness. She felt it—this was not a game, not fancy nor whim; he took her as an equal intelligence.

“Yes?”

“Buy as much Chicago city property as you can and sit on it. You need do nothing with it and as time passes it will swell and double, triple, turn pennies into thousands. When first I came here you could buy a central acre for a dollar or two. Now a quarter acre of downtown urban land goes for fifteen hundred dollars. This happened in New York and it is happening here in Chicago. It will be the source of tremendous wealth to those who have land and sit on it, hold it. Yes, yes, I know what you are going to say, that you have most of the company's money tied up in forestland. Very well. When the wood is off, sell that land to settlers. But the big money, made with no effort nor outlay beyond the original purchase price, is right under your feet. City land. Mark my words.”

“I mark them well.”

Mr. Pye straightened up from his notes and suggested that after so much talk they go to the Tremont for a dinner. On the way out Lawyer Flense stopped at Annag Duncan's desk. “You are a wonderful woman, Mrs. Duncan,” he said. “A remarkable office manager
and
a fine pastry cook.” Annag blushed and put her head down. Lavinia thought she was a bit of a fool to be flattered by the lawyer's attentions.

Over chops and roasted potatoes they talked of properties, city lots and blocks, and Flense said he would introduce Lavinia to a knowing and shrewd real estate agent. She nodded, but her mind was still swarming with ideas for extending her kingdom and she said musingly, “We may look abroad as well—oh, I do not mean Europe with its worn-out old lands—Europe is not our source but our market—yet there are other countries, places we do not know about. Not now, but in future years. What fabulous kinds of wood may not grow in distant places?” Far to the east, deep under leaf mold and black forest soil, the bones of Charles Duquet relaxed.